Frenemies To Best Friends - What Next?

My sadness was reflected in my work as well. I started to do all the things rather slowly for the next one hour before lunch break hit in.

When everyone left the premises, I went down to the cafeteria to refill my empty coffee cup. Maybe my sadness was eating my heart and it seemed to find the coffee to be its only source of comfort.

My mind was preoccupied with its thoughts of how certain things never seemed to go one's way while my legs made their way to the coffee station. I didn't realise I was refilling my cup at the wrong time until I felt a tap on my shoulder.

"Not coming?" he asked, appearing beside me and leaning on the cabinet wall.

"For what?" I asked sadly, staring at the filling cup absent-mindedly.

He removed the cup from the tray, making me come back to reality. The cup was filled until the brim and a sligth movement would cause an accident. And that, of course, would make me the laughing stock of people. I imagined all the horrors in that split second. My attire would be in a neat mess and a nice slip on the floor where the overflowing coffee would have fallen.

A waking call in my brain caused me to be startled and blink my eyes twice. I looked at the man with narrowed eyes and thanked him with a bow of my head. I had no intention of talking to him. Even his kind gesture didn't have any effect on my heart.

"What are you thinking so much about?" he said staring into my eyes with concern. "Did that new guy hit on you or reprimanded you?"

"Don't look into my eyes like that," I said and hit his arm at the high attention I was receiving from him, making me flush again. "And no, he didn't. Why would he, a savage beast, even do such a thing? Besides, he asked me to fix my appearance which definitely means I'm not pretty enough."

"Of course, you're not pretty," he said, sending his eyes up and back front as though my statement was very evident. I gasped and looked at myself up to down, concerning myself with every piece of untidy clothing I wore and owned.

"That's because you're beautiful," he finished without looking into my eyes as he took the cup from my hands.

He covered my filled cup of coffee with a plastic cap and said, "I'll see you at the entrance. Don't drink too much coffee or I won't be able to buy some nice dishes I have in mind. I can't have you feeling full before we get there."

With that, he left a flustered me near the counter, ogling at his retreating back. I had enough sense to not drop my cup and take it with me after arranging my desk and taking the required items with me in my sling bag.

The first few moments of silence in the car were awkward until my mind started to recollect our past memories.

I remembered meeting him as an intern. He was more ambitious than I was and was always ready to help someone out. Sometimes, he was very naive helping even a scammer out without realising it. And the first person he chose to speak to was a timid, introverted me, who would rather be by herself and observe different people.

Over time, my secretive cover got blown off in front of him and Yusra, and they couldn't believe that I was somewhat mad in doing certain things, but never more than them. Being a part of their mischievous adventures made me learn a lot of reasons why I shouldn't have been with them in the first place.

One of the biggest lessons that I learnt was to never encourage their mad tricks. They had once put a piece of chewing gum on the rollers of the office chair belonging to the then head of finance. The poor lady was stuck at her desk without being able to come out with any amount of force.

The maintenance team were called to remove her and her chair from the area. But what was irritating, and only a little hilarious, was the fact that all the three of us received the punishment. I bought the chewing gum for myself but these idiots decided to use it and have me framed with them as well for not being a part of their plan.

That day, we were sitting in a conference room, sticking back the shredded documents that came from the paper shredder and then learning the details in it. That was one of the worst punishments I had received in a lifetime.

I huffed a laugh at the recurrence of the memory. As much as I hated it back then, it was perhaps a good thing that we got to be naughty once in a lifetime. The memory retained turned out to be good enough for laughs.

"What is it?" he asked with a radiant smile.

"Remember the Chewing Gum incident?" I said with some humour in my voice. "I was just recollecting how funny it is now."

"Ah, that time. I loved being mischievous and getting people in trouble. Life was too boring to work a part-time job like that."

"Oh ho, no wonder your mind worked like a teenager back then. You have no idea how much I hated the two of you for pulling pranks on people, who later laughed, and getting me screwed when I had nothing to do with it."

"Such smartasses we were, weren't we?"

"The pair of you were, not me."

"But come on, you enjoyed it more than I did. Besides, there were times you did it too. Especially on that first day when you bullied back that rude intern."

"When it came to putting people in their place, sure. But not to be petty at them when it was our fault."

"There you go again, speaking about justice. You really should have been a prosecutor."

In our entire life from the time of internship until now, we had had many rows and disagreements. Yusra would turn out to be the peacemaker between us, but each of us would need at least a day away from the other person to realise that the mundane life we lead was so boring. It was these pleasantly irksome moments that made it fun to live.

"I still remember the time you got Mary trapped in a scandal," he said in a tight voice.

I noticed him try to stifle a laugh. When he couldn't hold it any longer, it escaped as a chuckle.

"The time when I slapped her across the face for tripping me?" I asked with screwed eyes, thinking deeply.

"Go a little further than that," he remarked, still smiling like a mad fool.

"When she stole my presentation by hacking into my system?"

"Well, that is there, for that was one nice face slap I saw in my entire life. But this one was the highlight."

'Whatever could it be?' I asked myself. 'I usually seem to hold grudges so how come I have forgotten it already?'

"Is it the time I exposed her scandal just as how she was spreading rumours about us?"

He grinned with delight and chuckled.

"It was not any scandal," he said after a while. "It was how she was scamming people. I couldn't believe your guts to get her caught in the fish's net so easily."

"You still have a child's mind if you laugh at such small incidents," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Hey, it was hilarious, alright. The look on her face and the words she kept spouting without realising that she wasn't supposed to, even though you threatened her... It was such a wonderfully laid out plan that none could see it coming."

As I sat recollecting the events, it did seem amusing. The brutish lady was well-known for spreading false rumours but none could pinpoint it at her. It was only when my turn came along, where she spouted about me having an affair with a famous personality, that I sought revenge.

I looked through every single piece of her life, sometimes becoming her stalker. It did prove beneficial when people got to know that she had been working for a rival company and scamming people in ours. She had of course been arrested for the crime.

Moreover, she herself had an affair outside of her marriage with some person who was somehow related to the mafia. Now the two of them live happily in the prison where they were always after to be.

"That incident totally made me fall in love with you," he mentioned. "Your face shone like you had received the most precious award in the world. You seemed so relieved that justice had been served."

I stared at him for a few moments trying to process what he had said.

He turned to look at the side mirror near me and glanced at my facial expression.

I didn't know what it looked like for him to say, "As a friend."

'You have been friend-zoned,' my psyche said in a robotic voice and laughed at my foolish self who still liked him nevertheless.